In this slice from the negatives, you can see the Mar-Crest toy camera is pretty poorly made. The images overlap badly, they are grossly overexposed, the film plane is not remotely straight and the lens is pretty badly out of focus. (Daniel J. Schneider)
As I document my camera collection, Putting a Roll Through is going to be a semi-regular feature displaying the rolls of film I run through each functional camera to see how it works.
These images are from my Mar-Crest toy camera (full write up here), and what is most evident is…well, a lot of things. Mostly, it’s just not a very good camera.
To capture them, I just took the camera on a roundabout walk to work through Denver’s Capitol Hill. What you can’t see in the 8th shot on the roll is the Women’s Press Club building on Logan Street — sadly, it’s so overexposed I couldn’t even save it in Photoshop.
This shot was a “long exposure” indoors, using the lens’s bulb setting, I opened it for about 1 to 1-1/2 seconds after asking everyone to hold still. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)In the rest of these examples, you can see the Mar-Crest isn’t really designed for bright sunlight. (Daniel J. Schneider)
These were shot using Efke R100 127 film and developed in Kodak HC-110 mixed in the unofficial formula E (47:1) for 7 min at 69°F.
Photoshopping included only black and white conversion (I scan in color to preserve nuances) and bringing the black levels up so that, in a few shots, you can actually see what I was looking at.
